Harry Potter and the Faces of Conspiracy
by Xan the Great
Summary: Petunia is killed (murdered?) The seal is broken, Harry is left to fend for himself after finding Petunia's lost heirloom, and ends up at St. Mungo's.My friends' and I think this little strange plot twist could actually occur in the 6th book... PLEASE RR!


Harry Potter and the Faces of Conspiracy.  
  
By some bored friends and yours truly. Thanks guys! This is what we feel is happen in book six.  
  
Chapter One: The Seal is Broken  
  
.  
  
On the night of the accident Uncle Vernon didn't even bother to lock Harry Potter in his room, Dudley's second one the Dursley's, out of the greatness of their hearts, had finally, after eleven years, let him have. But the scrawny boy in the extra room was the farthest thing from Vernon's mind, but that was okay. Harry was used to being the farthest thing from people's minds. But unfortunately, Harry's curiosity overcame all other emotions when the telephone rang.  
  
It was a kind of deadly, stinging ring that told even the dunderhead Dursley's that all was not right.  
  
Dudley was in his usual sleep on the sofa, which protested in oily creaks and screeches whenever he tossed, Uncle Vernon was watching the television in the "Family Room", grunting and snorting at the fact that his preferred program was not airing at this time of night, and Harry was talking softly to Hedwig of things she could never begin to fathom. The television droned out at the press of a button when the empty, trembling ring permeated the presumed normal flat. Harry, beginning to tire slightly of Hedwig's empty company, started to wonder whether Ron Weasley or Hermione Granger would even attempt to contact him using anything other than owls. He crept silently to the head of the stairs where he had a clear view of the telephone, hoping that this late call would bear him any information that might brighten his drab summer.  
  
He heard, let alone felt the house give a little shudder as Uncle Vernon heaved himself from his comfortable armchair and sauntered, mumbling about riddances of happy dispositions. He picked up the receiver with a sigh and a stroke of his moustache and gave his meaningless salutation. Harry heard his voice drift and crack as the professional phonation on the other line spoke in his ear. When Uncle Vernon tried to speak it was with an odd, waveringly high auditory sensation that Harry had never witnessed before.  
  
"W-what . . .? Are you sure that you've dialed the right . . ." He paused, contemplating the other man's next drab statement.  
  
"O-oh. Where? How . . . how is she?" A pause lingered as Uncle Vernon began to pace and with a shaking hand laid down the receiver without a simple goodbye.  
  
"Dudley," He shouted, running a fat hand through his hair. "Get in the car. It's your mother."  
  
Uncle Vernon shot past the staircase, grabbing his coat from the hanger. Harry decide quietly to himself that peering over the landing of the stairs was to leave himself too vulnerable, so he stole taciturnly back to his room and kept his door ever so slightly ajar; just wide enough so that it might catch any snippet of conversation in its stripped web of luminescence.  
  
What could possibly be wrong with Aunt Petunia?  
  
Harry went to his window with naught but his sigh to accompany him. He and his old sighs had become fast friends.  
  
He parted the gossamer blinds and peered between the imprisoning bars, watching Uncle Vernon pull the car fast from its whitewashed resting spot in the drive.  
  
But, as Harry stood there with a furrowed brow, something shot past the window of his mind, and he was just barely able to reach out and capture it. It was something Harry hadn't tried to comprehend since the end of last term at Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, since his beloved godfather, Sirius had passed through the gossamer veil in the Department of Mysteries, the veil that rippled slowly as the curtains Harry stared blankly at did now. What was it that Headmaster Dumbledore had tried to explain to him?  
  
He desperately tried to remember the fact he had been so eager to forget, the spell that was so hard to believe, but was, at the same time, so very, devastatingly true.  
  
"All spells must eventually wear off." Harry muttered to his reflection in the mirror, though he had no idea what had tempted him to whisper such a spontaneous statement. It was if he had not been the one who said this . . .  
  
*  
  
"Petunia, darling, you must stay with us . . ." Uncle Vernon muttered to his unconscious wife who lay on her deathbed, as it were. He squeezed her ice-cold hand, pressing down on the IV that dripped life ever so slowly into Petunia's body. Dudley sat quavering in the corner, wringing his pudgy hands and wailing uncontrollably.  
  
"The doctor said . . . he says . . ." Vernon couldn't bring himself to repeat that terminal information given to him naught but a half hour ago. He couldn't say out loud, couldn't sink into realization that the doctor said Petunia Dursley would not, as a result of her fatal collision with another car, linger throughout the night.  
  
*  
  
The next day Harry watched Uncle Vernon and a sobbing Dudley pull into Number Four Privet Drive. Footsteps approaching the door were heard as well, then the oaken door yielded and Dudley's cries became more pronounced. Uncle Vernon ascended the flight of stairs that eventually led to his bedroom, but he did not go there. Instead he burst violently into Harry's own bedroom.  
  
"You did this didn't you?!" He shouted, slamming the door back on its hinges. His face was extremely violet and it is safe to compare it to a large beetroot. Surprised, Harry scampered backwards, but Uncle Vernon snatched him painfully by the shoulders, putting his quivering face half a foot from Harry's own.  
  
"I know it was you! You did this, didn't you? You killed her!" He shouted, an unsteady tick going in his left temple and great wads of spit splattering Harry's face. His Uncle didn't give him time to answer.  
  
"I'm sick of you, boy! I want you out of my life!" He continued, shaking Harry violently.  
  
"I swear, I swear I didn't! I don't understand!"  
  
But Harry was slammed painfully against the wall as Uncle Vernon left his room, slamming the door angrily behind him.  
  
Harry rubbed his aching head and wondered, as he allowed his body to plummet onto the bed, why he would never be able to cry for the loss of his Aunt. She was d e a d , but no tear Harry was to drop for her sake.  
  
And suddenly Harry remembered what Dumbledore had told him about Aunt Petunia, about the seal of a thing called "love". The seal Harry's mother had unconsciously transferred to his Aunt Petunia. But if Petunia was dead . . .  
  
Then the seal was broken.  
  
But such a sudden, unexpected death made Harry wonder if s o m e o n e had broken the spell, not a fickle thing named Death or Accident. Could it be more than Death?  
  
Could it be a murder?  
  
. 


End file.
